


parallel lines

by srcgers



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, SteveTonyFest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 17:24:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2781539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/srcgers/pseuds/srcgers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From meeting to falling, and then from chasing to everything else that comes after that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	parallel lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fandomfrolics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomfrolics/gifts).



> Written for the SteveTonyFest!

* * *

**I.** **Meeting**

* * *

_“Mr. Stark.”_

_“Captain.”_

-

This, like most things in his life, is how it all starts: badly.

It starts like this — with red, white, and blue.

Steve: with the hard set of his jaw, his mouth in a tight line, disapproving, disappointed, trying to overcompensate for his loneliness by throwing himself headfirst into the Twenty-First Century, convincing himself that he is needed, that he has a purpose.  
Tony: cutting-edge humour and straight, sharp lines; overcompensating for the emptiness, for his inability to connect with others despite the success, the money, perhaps _because_ of these things.

Never touching, never meeting, never agreeing. Personalities clashing but despite it all, travelling in the same direction.

Some call it parallel lines.

Others,  
they call it love.

-

_“I know guys with none of that worth ten of you. I’ve seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.”_

_“I think I would just cut the wire.”_

_“Always a way out. You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”_

_“A hero? Like you? You’re a lab rat, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle.”_

-

Sharp words; sharp tongues.

Just met and already know how to throw the other’s insecurities right back in their face, how to stick the knife in then twist it, hard.

Tony: a mastermind at thinking on his feet.  
Steve: precise, calculated.

Feeding off each other. Feeding on each other. So many gaps and walls and spaces between them but when the strings are cut loose, they work so well together.

Tony: embodying technology and ego and flash and flair.  
Steve: embodying idealism and action and doing things on foot while Tony relies on his mind, his tech.

He anchors Tony down. Steve is earth.

Tony lifts him up. He is air.

It’s bittersweet, almost.

* * *

**II.** **Falling**

* * *

_Tony_

Arm outstretched — pushing buttons, pushing Steve’s buttons, until he’s red in the face and lashing back, until one day he’s being held at arm’s length with Steve’s hand fisted into his shirt collar and he remembers how there didn’t used to be someone who dared to go toe to toe with him on his best day and now here he is, here Steve is, telling him to put on the suit and go a few rounds, and he thinks: God, where have you been all my life?

And then he thinks: oh.

_Steve_

When the realisation hits him, what it should’ve done was hit him hard; a conviction, a train wreck, just like the way he misses the Howling Commandoes, like the way he’s seventy years late to his date with a girl who eyed him even before he was tall — because what does Steve know about love but the short, sharp pain of loss and regret.

Only it’s not like that at all.

Instead, Steve finds out, falling in love with Tony Stark feels a little like this:

  * hot, fresh-out-of-the-oven apple pie burning the roof of your mouth,
  * calling your name out on the edge then hearing it echo back to you in ripples,
  * holding someone’s collar in your closed fist and feeling their eyes on you,
  * surviving a bullet wound. 



_Tony_

He thinks about it.

Then he thinks about it some more.

After that, he tones down the bickering and starts replacing the elderly jokes with popular culture references he knows Steve will get. He starts returning the glances he catches Steve throwing his way. Starts making excuses to get Steve into the lab and tell him all about his latest projects, bright-eyed and grinning like a madman, because this is what he does, isn't it — he talks and hopes for the best.

_Steve_

He watches Tony graph out a blueprint and it is a love letter to science, to mathematics, to quantum mechanics, to all things Steve can’t even wrap his head around. So he listens to Tony speak (loudly, passionately, pausing for dramatic effect, his hands flying across holograms) and Steve nods and clears a space on Tony’s bench top, sitting down, listening, soaking it in and trying to understand, even though Tony points to the diagram, and all Steve sees is the way his fingers move.

* * *

**III.** **Chasing**

* * *

Steve asks him, whilst flipping pancakes one morning, to accompany him for dinner in an old bistro near Brooklyn that he’s read good reviews about. Tony replies, equally nonchalantly, that he could probably make it, maybe, if he isn’t too busy — and then thumbs out a text to Pepper immediately after Steve’s back is turned: 

`CANCEL EVERYTHING TONIGHT.`

Tony ends up getting sauce on a $400 shirt and Steve, slightly pink, ends up letting slip that this dingy little place, with its flickering lights and checked tablecloths, has been his favourite restaurant since he was a child and that he was just making an excuse to have dinner with him.

Tony blanches and wipes his mouth, then stands up a little too abruptly.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he says, and they do. Steve takes his scarf off and winds it gently around Tony's neck, then beneath the handfuls of stars above the Brooklyn cityscape, Steve closes his eyes; sighs quietly — the tension in his shoulders roll off him in waves.

Tony turns and his gaze travels down Steve’s profile: along the dip of his eyes, along the length of his nose, down to the shadow pooling above his upper lip, down to his perfect, peach mouth, and Tony swallows.

"I think I'm in love with you," he says.

Steve opens his eyes; smiles.


End file.
